DAVE School offers intensive 1-year training leading to meaningful employment in computer animation for film, visual effects, and gaming. 2014 placement is at 83% and the school is located at Universal Studios Orlando.

Profiles and Interviews with Leading Animation, Design, Gaming, and Media Firms:

We have published dozens of profiles of influential firms that are desired places of employment for aspiring animation and design professionals. Below is a list of our profiles to date. Bookmark it now as an easy reference.

In honor of the formidable animation legends, special effects greats, comic company superheros and phenomenal producers we have put together an industry-voted list of the 100 most influential people in the animation industry. By surveying trained professionals, historians and restorationists (many of whom participated in our Interview Series)—and then a whole lotta' research—we put together this list, along with bios, of the biggest names and most influential contributions that have helped shape the animation industry that we know today. From Disney to DC and Paramount to Pixar, and back again. Without further ado, here are your Top 100 Most Influential People in Animation in suspense-building reverse order:

I’ve been professionally writing about the game, film, and tech industries for six years. With a degree in 3D graphics, I have seen, studied, and experienced every aspect of 2D and 3D animation, and am currently working on my first Droid and iPhone game. After researching over 600 active, closed, bought, sold, and merged studios that have been located around the planet in the past century, I gathered feedback from dozens of industry experts before deciding on the final hundred that made the cut.

After eight years of writing about video games, I wanted to take the pulse of the game industry. I organized this list with the criteria for influence being: how long since a studio’s last release, how many releases they had in 2013 and 2014 combined, how many copies were sold, how many people still play their games today, what do they have coming out in the near future, how unique are their games, and how much competition from other studios do they have?

A few years have passed since I wrote my Top 100 Most Influential Animation Studios of All Time list and I wanted to take the pulse of the current animation industry. I organized my studio rankings with the criteria for influence being: how many releases they had in 2013 and 2014 combined, how many people watched their new animations when they were released, how many people still watch their older animations today, what do they have coming out in the near future, how unique are their animations, and how much competition from other studios do they have?

After eight years of writing about video games, I wanted to take the pulse of the game industry. I organized this list with the criteria for influence being: how long since a studio’s last release, how many releases they had in 2013 and 2014 combined, how many copies were sold, how many people still play their games today, what do they have coming out in the near future, how unique are their games, and how much competition from other studios do they have?

Animation Career Review has had the great fortune of being able to interview some of the most interesting and knowledgeable people in the animation world. Below is a list of companies, schools, and colleges that have conducted interviews to date.

What does it take to get a job with NCSOFT? What is it like working at NCSOFT? ACR takes a look:

About NCSOFT

Established in 1997, NCSOFT Corporation is a publisher and developer of massively multiplayer online role-playing games or MMORPGs. In addition to launching Korea’s “first highly popularized internet-based online game” titled Lineage, the company has produced popular titles such as Lineage 2, Aion, Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, and Blade & Soul. Lineage is NCSOFT’s flagship product. Since the development of NCSOFT’s flagship product—Lineage, the company’s games have attracted millions of subscribers in Korea alone, plus millions more worldwide.

A few years have passed since I wrote my Top 100 Most Influential Animation Studios of All Time list and I wanted to take the pulse of the current animation industry. I organized my studio rankings with the criteria for influence being: how many releases they had in 2013 and 2014 combined, how many people watched their new animations when they were released, how many people still watch their older animations today, what do they have coming out in the near future, how unique are their animations, and how much competition from other studios do they have?

Kickstarter is full of extravagant claims and hyperbole, but when Toonocalypse promises that it’s “one of the most unique alien invasion movies ever made” it absolutely delivers when you scroll through its funding page. It’s an apocalypse tale that’s as big as Cloverfield but with the cartoon injected art style of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? In all of my years in the art industry I’ve never seen a hybrid art project quite like this. Fans of big action movies will enjoy it and fans of old point-and-click adventure cartoon games like Toonstruck will be obsessed with it.

Have you heard that Ed Schofield, Mike Dietz, and Doug TenNapel – some of the brilliant and talented artists who made Earthworm Jim and The Neverhood – have teamed up once again to work on a point-and-click adventure game with a clay animation stop-motion art style? Even if this project didn’t have the legendary Pencil Test Studios names attached to it we’d still be keeping our eyes on it, but knowing it’s in good hands means you should check out their $900,000 Kickstarter funding campaign.

Animation is young. How young? Well, before Film was possible or even thought of, Peter Roget presented a paper called “The Persistence of Vision” that explained to the British Royal Society that a succession of images could induce the illusion of movement and life. That was in 1824- less than 200 years ago. One year later, to test his theory, the Thaumatrope optical toy is used to demonstrate and confirm Roget’s idea.

Vancouver’s Think Tank Training Centre caters to very driven animation students who seek a studio-like environment to learn the ropes of the industry. And do they ever find it! When the school was founded in 2005, it became a beta tester for the then-new Mudbox, the 3D sculpting tool used by Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital.

As part of our Interview Series we have tried to capture advice from successful animation entrepreneurs that have carved-out a place for themselves in the industry, so it's a good thing we ran into Nathan Dillow. Nathan Dillow is the Creative Director for his collaborative animation house Fuzz Animation, and a fairly ingenious entrepreneur.

The most successful production studios in the business have used their specific talents, found their niche, then worked their tails off to carve out a place for themselves in the industry. Image Engine did just that.